The Dutch Republic

Substantially revised second edition of the leading textbook on the Dutch Republic, including new chapters on language and literature, and slavery.

The Dutch Golden Age, known for its renowned artists and writers, was also remarkable for its immense impact on the spheres of commerce, finance, shipping, and technology. Israel gives the definitive account of the emergence of the United Provinces as a great power, its subsequent decline in the 18th century, and the changing relationship between the northern Netherlands and the south, which was to develop into modern Belgium. 32 color plates.

Offers a distinctive history of money as an everyday social technology in the Dutch Republic from 1600 to 1850.

In the first half of the seventeenth century the Dutch Republic emerged as one of Europe's leading maritime powers. The political and military leadership of this small country was based on large-scale borrowing from an increasingly wealthy middle class of merchants, manufacturers and regents This volume presents the first comprehensive account of the political economy of the Dutch republic from the sixteenth to the early nineteenth century. Building on earlier scholarship and extensive new evidence it tackles two main issues: the effect of political revolution on property rights and public finance, and the ability of the nation to renegotiate issues of taxation and government borrowing in changing political circumstances. The essays in this volume chart the Republic's rise during the seventeenth century, and its subsequent decline as other European nations adopted the Dutch financial model and warfare bankrupted the state in the eighteenth century. By following the United Provinces's financial ability to respond to the changing national and international circumstances across a three-hundred year period, much can be learned not only about the Dutch experience, but the wider European implications as well.

This study offers an overview of the development and structure of the remarkable public finances of the Dutch Republic. Comparisons with the Venetian Republic, Britain and the Ottoman Empire underline the importance of ‘urbanization trajectories’ in understanding differences in fiscal performance.

In 1990 an international colloquium was held at the Netherlands Institute for Advanced Study in the Humanities and Social Sciences (NIAS), under the title "'Le Magasin de l'Univers.' The Dutch Republic as the Centre of the European Book Trade." This volume brings together the twenty-two contributions presented at the conference by historians of the book from England, France, Switzerland, the United States, Germany, and the Netherlands.

This account describes both the economic support given by Dutch merchants and bankers and the struggle over Dutch recognition of the United States. The author goes beyond political history to tell his tale through cultural events, giving a realistic sense of the Dutch world at the close of the Old Regime. He also delineates the powerful impact of the American Revolution on the Dutch and the influence of the Dutch style of government on the Americans.

The tumultuous relations between Britain and the United Provinces in the seventeenth century provide the backdrop to this book, striking new ground as its transnational framework permits an overview of their intertwined culture, politics, trade, intellectual exchange, and religious debate. How the English and Dutch understood each other is coloured by these factors, and revealed through an imagological method, charting the myriad uses of stereotypes in different genres and contexts. The discussion is anchored in a specific context through the lives and works of John Milton and Andrew Marvell, whose complex connections with Dutch people and society are investigated. As well as turning overdue attention to neglected Dutch writers of the period, the book creates new possibilities for reading Milton and Marvell as not merely English, but European poets.